and be far more dependent on government “services” thannthe semiautonomous families they had displaced.nBut this awful realization was merely the beginning of mynreeducation. Looking back, I grew aware that the UnitednStates had paid another large price through its submission tonthe engineers of federal housing policy: a weird homogenizaHonnthat cut at the fabric of authendc pluralism and realncommunity. Its roots lay in the Housing Act of 1934. Thisnmeasure charged the new FHA with the establishment ofnuniform insurance and property standards for a nationalnhousing market and the stimulation of technical and landplanningnstandards to ease tract housing work.nNot only did federal housing policy suppressnfamily autonomy, subvert real communities,nand assault regional vitality, but it alsonworked to corrupt the morals of thencitizenry and to encourage family breakup.nThe push for “national housing standards” took onngreater urgency with the onset of the Cold War. A specialn1951 issue of the prestigious Bulletin of the AtomicnScientists looked at “Defense Through Decentralization: AnSymposium on Dispersal,” and elevated the suburbanizationndrive into a national security mandate. As a measure ofncivil defense, the editors urged that all future residentialndevelopment be guided toward “garden cities” located innthe open countryside. This dispersion of America’s populationn”would so reduce the advantages an enemy might hopento obtain by dropping his supply of bombs that … henmight decide not to use the weapon at all.” Contributorsnagreed that private property rights and local political footdraggingnstood in the way of reasoned national efforts.nWhile hoping for a federal superagency to guide the needednplanning, they concluded that Uncle Sam already had thenneeded power through FHA mortgage and CI insurancenprograms to push most new construction out to the urbannfringe. This power should be fully exercised in line with thennational “imperative” for “orderly dispersal” of the cities.nAt about the same time, leading residential architects andnurban planners fell under the spell of a peculiar theorynin family sociology, with further pernicious results in thenpublic policy realm. They referenced the work in the 1920’snof William Ogburn and Ernest Rutherford, who hadnemphasized that “there is a considerable and increasingndisorganization of the family” that would end only as thenfamily structure adjusted to modern realities. Housingntheorists took a more particular shine to the work of Ernestn, W. Burgess and Henry J. Locke, who argued that as thenfamily shed its legal, social, and economic functions, itnreorganized on the companionship principle. Embracingnthis wodd view, the social engineers presumed that thisn”companionship family” would predominate in the future,nresting on “the mutual affection, the sympathetic understanding,nand the comradeship of its members.” As then16/CHRONICLESnnnhome became the place for psychological intimacy, democracy,nand love, they asserted that governmental and othernnonfamily institutions would solidify their control over thenold family functions of education, financial security, youthntraining, and religious piety.nCatching the spirit, urban planners drew the conclusionnthat “it becomes possible … to maintain family interactionnwithout recourse to the traditional housekeeping dwellingnunit.” Home structures “inherited from the family farm”nshould be supplanted by rational, flexible designs more inntune with “modern life patterns.” Iri an influential 1951narticle, architect Svend Reimer celebrated the use of “familynfunctions as a guide to residential architecture.” Stressingnthat “housing attitudes must be related to long-term trendsnof social change in the family,” Reimer saw functionalnarchitecture promoting a “definite way of life,” one thatnabandoned formal rooms like pariors or single-purposenrooms and replaced them by flexible rooms “that serve theneveryday life of the family.”nThese functionalist assumptions about the loss of thenfamily’s economic and social roles and the reorganization ofnthe family about its intimate psychological core burrowedndeeply into federal housing policy. The official 1979n”Fannie Mae” history of housing stressed that “the familynwas no longer the basic economic as well as the social unit.”nRegarding home design, this meant that “there was nonlonger so great a need for attics, sheds, storage cellars, workn.rooms, sewing rooms, etc.” Easy access to “processed foodnsupplies” meant less need for pantries and large kitchens.nThe loss of the family’s social role also implied littie need forn”the drawing rooms and grand staircases of former years.”nInstead, the new “companionship family” needed “opennplans with flexible spaces that could be adapted to thenfamily’s more informal lifestyle. . . . Space and facilities fornnurturing . . . were needed to replace the space for workshopsnthat had been used when economic function was sonimportant.”nIn truth, this quasi-official analysis offered intellectualncover to an attack on the residual economic importance ofnthe family, and the real power it still held vis-a-vis the state.nHousing policy joined other modernist weapons in a finalnassault against those “functions” clustered under the phrasen”household production,” which protected family autonomynand, in turn, personal liberty. FHA guidelines transformednrogue sociological theory into action, and mortgages werensystematically denied to any residence that contained facilitiesndesigned for use as a productive shop, an office, anseparate apartment for extended family member or renter,nor a preschool.nThis federal pressure for a national leveling of family lifentook other forms, as well. FHA rules discouraged bothnregional and experimental architectures, favoring insteadn”conservative” design focused on a few models: Cape Cod,nColonial, the “split-level,” and the “basic ranch.” Thenagency’s Underwriting Training Handbook cast such mattersnunder the rubric of conformity and nonconformity,nexplaining: “The significance of nonconformity in realnestate is that as the degree of nonconformity progressesnfurther from a reasonable degree of conformity with othernproperties in the neighborhood, the value of the nonconformingnproperty becomes less and less.” In service to thisn